Super Moderator

It's funny -- it seems to me that a number of those shots have relatively false colors (that is, the saturation was punched up or the hues were manipulated a bit -- thinking specifically of 5,6,7,11 and 12), yet they are lovely shots. Only recently have I begun to get over the fear that "this isn't accurate to the shot" and instead am working towards what looks good. It's only taken me about 3 years to get there!

Super Moderator

Wow. I liked a few of them, but most of them didn't do a whole lot for me. Some seemed too flat and others way unnatural. Some of them almost looked kinda fake/computer generated like those screensaver pictures.

I agree completely Bill with your pick of the bunch....in my view with the exception of the breakfast.....they were all Photoshopped to death!! That is the one thing that bothers me with contests....very few are natural....all have had some manipulation to them and I am a purist....also....I am old enough to remember the darkroom!!

Mu-43 Regular

My initial take was that the winner could have been a nicely put together HDR and although I like the look of some pix of that nature they don't look like that for real. It's a tool given to us by the software sellers to play with. Plus, at the time I checked the link I was hungry, so the breakfast took my vote!

Mu-43 Veteran

I often find with photos like that that am impressed by the first one, but lose interest after the second. I don't know why, but that doesn't happen with less heavily processed images. Good luck to the guy though!

Mu-43 Regular

The urban stuff was just too common. The sheep picture had me wondering why oh why weren't those tails docked? (I've raised sheep) The border collie did remind me of my old border collie - Tex - I do miss Tex - got old and passed . The breakfast picture - well it needed the other side of the window to finish making it look like a picture. Besides - really - who on earth eats beans for breakfast?

OK so it's probably obvious that I have some pretty strong feelings about HDR cause most of the pictures were HDRd.

To me HDR photography is about capturing the dynamic range of a scene in a photograph with adequate detail. Another way to think of it is to have as few solid black or solid white areas in a photograph as possible. If you think of it in terms of your eyes - when you look at a very dark area of a scene your eyes adjust and you see detail - ditto a very bright area - your eyes adjust and you see detail. HDR is an effort to capture that adjustibilty in a photograph.

HDRs and tonemapping. Because there are so many poorly done they have become synonymous with garish, halo induced nightmares. Why wouldn’t the average view think that way? Probably because a properly tonemapped HDR is indistinguishable from a properly exposed, properly lit landscape. Visit my website, DAN JURAK - THE ALBERTA LANDSCAPE Can you pick out which images are tonemapped and which aren’t. I don’t think you can. If you can, I haven’t done my job as a photographer.
I expect that sort of ignorance of HDRs and tonemapping from people who are casual or hobby photographers but I still see that thinking among working professionals. This is all the more irking when you realize these tonemapping haters make money teaching amateurs about photography.
How’d you like to go to university and find out your prof kind of had an idea of what they were talking about but it was all based on misinformation? Would you think you were getting value for your tuition? That’s the case with many of the photography workshops I see advertised in magazines and on the internet. The same people teaching photography to beginners. Sheesh! Great way for a beginner to get a start in photography.
When I read about how cartoony tonemapping is I shake my head in disbelief because those people don’t have the slightest clue. Maybe if they actually experimented with the programs they speak of?
That ignorance comes from using presets and sticking with them...

HDR a powerful tool that can be rightly or wrongly applied - it's all a matter of taste - the viewers. And he is absolutely right you often absolutely cannot tell if you are looking at an HDR. I have absolutely no doubt that far more often than we realize that when looking at professional work we are looking at HDR and don't even know it.

So to me the HDR situation begs a simple question - where exactly is the line between photography and art? Fortunately due to the many "filters" (many in camera) we have and our ability to manipulate digital photos we can express ourselves as "realistically" or as "artistically" as we like. For when it comes right down to it - a moment in time is gone forever and who is to say what the reality really was? Lets suppose for a moment we could "take a picture" of a scene through the eyes of a "normal" person, somebody drunk, somebody high on pot and somebody strung out on LSD. Which "picture" would represent the reality of a moment never to exist again? I would argue that they all do. Reality absolutely does not necessarily represent the one that I can most identify with - bartender another beer please!